I'm looking for brewing software that helps with record-keeping, calculations, inventory, and/or recipes. Across any platform (Windows/Mac OS X/Linux), what brewing software is available, and what are the pros and cons of each?

I'm a fan of ProMash, though it is Windows only and doesn't seem to have had much development in recent time.
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TimNov 17 '10 at 7:47

I love brewblogger, it works great for both the clubs I'm in.
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Nicholas TrandemNov 17 '10 at 17:01

BrewBlogger seems overly complicated. There are much simpler "web-based alternatives". I wasn't a huge fan of BrewTarget either... but it a good free alternative to BeerSmith.
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JasonStoltzMar 10 '11 at 15:46

I use BeerAlchemy (Mac/iPhone only), and it does pretty much anything I need, including keeping track of inventory. The iPhone version is really neat, and syncs to the Mac-version. The only thing I miss is listing batches by date, I use a spreadsheet on Google Docs for that.

While I think BeerAlchemy is a decent program, there are just some things about it that drive me nuts: only being able to view calculator at a time, calculators do not keep state when toggling between them, not being able to adjust the process of a batch once the parent recipe is defined, etc... It's better than a notebook, but i recommend it as an OSX app with reservation. Although, the iPhone syncing is pretty cool :)
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gthmbNov 19 '10 at 23:37

BeerCalculus is really nice to put your recipes together. Since it's a web app, it's platform agnostic. I don't believe it does anything like inventory management. I've used BeerSmith in the past, and it's really nice and worth the money if you need inventory management.

Specifically, I asked about online applications, because I'd much rather use a web application then a desktop application.

One that was mentioned in that thread that was not already mentioned here is http://brewershub.com/. I haven't had a chance to play around with it extensively, but it looks nice and it appears to have a rich set of features. It sounds like it was just launched recently. Maybe one more to check out!

EDIT: After looking at this more, it looks like it DOES let you enter recipes, but it doesn't appear to do any calculations for you, which is a little lame. However, it looks like it does allow you to import BeerXML files, which are generated by programs like BeerSmith, so I guess you could create a recipe in BeerSmith and import it here.

Hi Jason, I am one of the developers/homebrewers behind brewershub. We just launched a new recipe builder: brewershub.com/recipe_builders/new that should cover some of the issues you reported with calculations. There is a link to a demo video right on our homepage. We are definitely looking for feedback as this is a brand new site and system and we are trying to make this as useful for brewers as possible. PLease give it a shot and let me know what you think. Looking forward to your feedback.
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tomcoccaJan 2 '11 at 15:30

BeerSmith is an excellent brewing software. It offers easy to understand recipe creation and a brewday instruction sheet. It also allows for different equipment setups. Recipes generally follow style guidelines.

I have used BeerTools Pro quite successfully on Windows. They have a free web-based version on their site as well, but it limits the number of ingredients you can add and lacks the mash schedule calculator which I used quite a lot.

I stopped using it so much when I moved from a Windows laptop to an Ubuntu laptop and found that BeerTools doesn't run under Wine.

Another vote for BeerTools Pro. I run it on a mac, and switched to it after using BeerSmith previously. I find it to be very accurate for my process, and provides all the tools I need.
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Carson C.Mar 8 '11 at 23:56

I can't say enough about BrewPal! iPhone app (which is great because I don't brew in front of my computer). Only $0.99! Built in mash (fly, batch, decoction, partial, or steep) and boil timers (so I can enjoy as many homebrews as I want and not forget to add the 15 min hops, irish moss, or wort chiller...).

I'm a developer and was going to write my own just to learn how to write iPhone apps and learn about all of the math that can go into brewing, but this just did everything I was hoping for and more that I never wrote it. Maybe write something similar for Android.

Doesn't have inventory management features but I'm not that advanced anyways.

I just made this in the last couple months, it has calculations, exporting/importing, recipes, ingredients, and a historical brewing log of each beer you brewed and how it differed from the recipe you were attempting to follow.